Chapter 26. Connecting an Xbox 360
For a long time, companies in both the consumer electronics and the computer industries have been talking about convergence devices. Convergence devices are those that leverage their technological sophistication to do a job that in the past would have required a different device. Well, convergence devices are now sneaking into our living rooms in the form of game consoles. Given the tremendous amount of computing and graphics horsepower that goes into today's consoles, from multi-core CPUs, high definition video, network connectivity and storage, it's no surprise that these devices are leading the pack when it comes to convergence.
Microsoft's Xbox 360, the second generation game console, is a case in point. It contains a custom 3.2 gigahertz (GHz) triple core PowerPC processor, as well as a custom ATI graphics processor. Add a hard drive and an Ethernet port, and it's a multimedia machine that is able to do a lot more than just play games.
You can get media content on to the Xbox 360 in a number of ways. You can download it from Xbox Live Marketplace, or view it from an attached USB device. Two of the more exciting ways to view content on the 360 are via its streaming media support. The 360 has the ability to act as a media center extender for XP Media Center Edition and Vista MCE content. In addition, ...
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